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en-usCopyright 2017Martin Sheen's 'The Home Front' Tackles Hate and Anxiety in Wartime America Forget what you think you know about America during World War II. Movies like Saving Private Ryan and Dunkirk only tell half the story -- the story of what happened abroad. But there's so much more about the world of the Greatest Generation that is brought to life by The Home Front: Life in America During WWII, the new Audible Original Series featuring the evocative voice of Martin Sheen. The 16-part audio series draws upon a vast library of archival recordings taken during the years leading up to and during World War 2. You hear voices of Americans displaying the sorts of emotions that don't translate into a history textbook as they recount the hard realities faced at home and within US ranks, even as we went to war against the Nazis.

"We were divided on some deeply shaky ground," says Sheen of revelations he gleaned while researching this project. "I knew about the horrible racism in our country. And I knew about the racism in the armed services in the war. But I didn't know the extent, the depth, and the damage that that did to our country."

The candid interviews in The Home Front: Life in America During WWII give us a fresh view of this monumental time in American history and leave us with five major lessons that resonate today:

Racial hatred divided the country throughout WWII. The scope and brutality of the violence during the war is an eye-opening and stark contrast to the celebrations of national unity that we often associate with the time period. "1943 became one of the country's most racially violent years of the 20th century," begins one episode titled "Zoot Suit." By the end of the year, racial violence had broken out in at least 47 cities nationwide-- including the infamous "zoot suit riots" in Los Angeles, in which Mexican-American citizens were beaten and dragged naked through the streets.

Prejudice was a terrifying reality in the armed forces, as well. The military, previously considered the pantheon of self-discipline, was not exempt from the violence and division that plagued the United States. "Racism against African-American soldiers in the military was institutionalized. They were segregated into their own units and limited in what duties they could performed." Historian J. Todd Moye points out, "They did not want to get into a situation where they had African-Americans giving orders to whites. They were absolutely opposed to that and they were determined, because the United States was segregated, the United States as a whole practiced white supremacy... so you can't expect the army to get out in front in matters of integration."

Life for Rosie the Riveter wasn't always so rosy. For the first time, women were taking jobs in factories, warehouses, and shipyards across the country. Some were enlisting. It was a great leap forward for women in the workplace, but for many it came at a humiliating--or even deadly--cost. In Hawaii, the U.S. military shipped sex workers from San Francisco to a brothel and made them serve the soldiers. Women were cast as enemy carriers of disease in official propaganda. "There's a horrible poster that shows skeletal women in evening gowns walking with Hirohito or Hitler and it said 'the worst of the three,' implying that the women who carried these diseases were worse than Hitler," recalls historian Emily Yellin.

Anti-Semitism in the United States was rampant. At a time when Jewish people faced an existential threat in Europe, their greatest hope and perceived lifeline across the ocean was struggling with its own ambivalence. Celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh, one of the era's biggest celebrities, was a tacit supporter of the Nazi party and staunchly against U.S. intervention. Lindbergh's "enormous popularity helped him find sympathy among many Americans for his pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic views," we learn in episode 3: "To Isolate or to Intervene?" On the radio, Father Charles Coughlin of Detroit built an audience of 30 million listeners by spewing anti-Semitic rhetoric. One listener recalls, "They were calling Roosevelt 'Rosenfeld;' they were calling the New Deal the 'Jew Deal' and that we were fighting the war for the Jews." The U.S. government was often complicit. When a refugee ship called the St. Louis arrived on American shores, they were turned away and a third of its passengers died in the Holocaust. Then in 1944, it was revealed that "The State Department had deliberately covered up news of the Nazi death camps."

Ingenuity was part and parcel of the war machine. Not everything in World War II America was grim. While it was a period of tension, anxiety and shortage, it was also an incubator for ingenuity. The United States built up "uninterrupted production," in the words of President Roosevelt, so that they and their allies could "maintain control of the seas and attain control of the air--not merely a slight superiority, but an overwhelming superiority." Production of consumer goods like toaster ovens and automobiles, finally within economic reach of many American citizens, was halted so companies could make war devices that they had sometimes never even heard of before. Historian Maury Klein relays this anecdote: "The war department asked the president of Chrysler, for example: 'Could you make us X-thousand number of tanks?' And the president responded: "I don't see why not. What's a tank?'"

While these struggles are not playing out exactly the same way at home and abroad, many of them still haunt us today. Listening to this 16-part series, which subtly draws parallels between current events and those of the 1940s, can help us see how far we still have to go to truly overcome these conflicts -- and maybe teach us how to get there.

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https://audiblerange.com/arts-culture/martin-sheens-the-home-front-tackles-hate-and-anxiety-in-wartime-america/Arts & CultureAudibleAudible ChannelsEducationHistoryHuman behaviorInterviewsMilitaryStorytellingFri, 22 Sep 2017 11:08:21 -0500Celebrate Canada With Some Of Its (And The World's) Best Genre FictionLet’s be honest, when you think of Canada you probably think of the country in stereotypes: beer, Mounties, Second City comedians, the way Canadians pronounce “sorry” and “about,” or how the country becomes a tempting place to flee when the direction of America goes askew of your preferences.

Now, because of our famous politeness (yes, I’m Canadian), we’d probably be inclined to forgive you for not knowing more. Still, I’d suggest — politely, of course — that it might be neighborly (or “neighbourly,” as we write it up here) of you to think of what we have to offer beyond clichés. For instance, here’s something you may not know about the country: Our authors do genre fiction — fantasy, science-fiction, romance, and crime — really, really well, and we’re mighty proud of them.

What distinguishes Canadian genre authors? Well, while genre can sometimes be burdened by clichés (like, ahem, some people’s perceptions of other countries), our genre literature often avoids familiar routes. Sometimes genres are mashed up to liven things up. Sometimes moral complexity is used to bring depth to otherwise black-and-white binaries. Sometimes an unexpected hopeful tone is introduced to bleak subject matter. But above all else, what unites Canadian fantasy, sci-fi, crime, etc., is a willingness to approach stories from a different, often surprising angle (think of how Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Taleain’t your typical dystopian novel). In other words, Canadian genre not only offers you a chance to see how another country tells these stories, but a chance to experience something totally new in familiar frameworks.

Here is a sampling of Canadian books that reflect the array of scary, goopy, romantic, thrilling, mysterious, and futuristic genre lit we have to offer.

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https://audiblerange.com/playlisted/celebrate-canada-with-some-of-its-and-the-worlds-best-genre-fiction/AudibleAudiobooksMystery & ThrillerPlaylistedRecommendationsRomanceSci-fi & FantasyWed, 13 Sep 2017 09:41:15 -0500Homeschool Help: Listening Adds Up To LearningHaley Stewart is juggling a lot. For this homeschooling mom to three kids — ages 8, 5, and 4 — who also works from home and blogs about all of it, tasks can pile up. Audiobooks have found multiple uses in her busy homeschooling schedule — and after homeschool is dismissed.

“Our brand of homeschooling is definitely not a home-all-day kind of scenario,” she says. “We’re on the go much of the week — going to the zoo, the park, the museum — and it’s great to be ‘schooling’ whenever we’re in the car.”

Audiobooks are widely used in traditional schools, and — as in Stewart’s home — they’ve also found their way into homeschooling. Homeschooling parents across the country have found they can boost the number and difficulty of books their children can read, help children with learning disabilities keep up with their peers, and even help parents take some time for themselves.

Because Stewart’s kids are at such different reading levels, audiobooks help her differentiate instruction without having to be in two or three places at once. “I can be working with an older kid on math while the younger ones, who aren’t reading yet, can listen to a great book — without me needing to read it aloud to them. There’s only one of me, after all,” she says.

Audiobooks can also help students who have difficulty reading keep up with their work at the appropriate grade level. They have been used for this purpose for decades in traditional learning environments, and with expanding technology, they’ve found a place in homeschooling as well.

“He’d listened to so many books, he had an ability to think about and discuss things far beyond his years.”

Marianne Sunderland knows all about this. She has eight children — her oldest is 25, and her youngest is 7 — and all but one have dyslexia. She’s homeschooled all of them, and all have benefitted from the use of audiobooks to ease the burden of traditional reading and help them read books at their grade level.

As was reported in our story, “For Kids With Reading Challenges, Just Add Listening,” audiobooks have a long history of helping students with disabilities, and can boost the self-worth of students who cannot experience books in the same way as their peers. In middle school, students begin to read more complicated books. Often for those with disabilities, their ability to understand difficult content surpasses their ability to read the words on the page. Audiobooks help them bridge this gap.

And in high school, audiobooks help students with disabilities keep up. “It’s all about time management in high school. It’s all about access to content that allows them to learn at the same speed as their peers,” he says.

When Sunderland’s eldest son was taking high school biology, she discovered a company that made an audio version of his textbook. “The difference in his ability to understand and comprehend what he was learning was so profound he couldn’t believe it,” she says. “He thought he wasn’t very smart, but once he was listening to it, it made perfect sense.”

During high school, he attended a private school for a few years so he could play football. He exceeded all expectations by acing his English class. “He’d listened to so many books, he had an ability to understand things and to think about and discuss things far beyond his years,” she says. “His teacher was raving about him.”

Her children are able to read beyond their grade levels with audiobooks.

Prior to audiobooks, her children found reading exhausting — and would often read below their grade level even though they could comprehend much more difficult material. “They were missing out on all that vocabulary and complex sentence structure,” she says.

Her children are able to read beyond their grade levels with audiobooks — keeping up with whole series, complex plots and subplots, and words far beyond what their dyslexia would allow from a traditional book. “There are kids that read voraciously, but it’s too tiring for my kids, and they just don’t get as much out of it,” she says. “Now, my daughter comes out of her room and her eyes are huge and she’s like, ‘Wow! That was such a good book!’”

Audible narration for Kindle books has been particularly powerful for her children, who can now follow along with the text of a book on a Kindle while it is being read aloud. As the book is read, the words are highlighted, making it easy for children who have difficulty reading keep pace with the book.

Sunderland frequently speaks at homeschooling conventions, and writes extensively about homeschooling children with dyslexia. She frequently encounters parents who view audiobooks as “cheating” — replacing traditional reading with something less complex. “But it’s not cheating — it’s helping them fill their heads and to grow. [My children’s] ability to read is never going to match their intellectual ability,” she says. “Don’t look at audiobooks or any other kind of accommodation as a cheat.”

Audiobooks are also great for homeschooling parents, say Stewart and Sunderland. As busy as they are, much of their time for themselves requires them to multitask. Audiobooks allow them to keep their hands free.

Sunderland downloads audiobooks to listen to while she’s driving to homeschooling conferences, as she often does. “It’s great! I don’t like to have downtime, I like to keep busy,” she says. She listens to a lot of nonfiction and books on dyslexia.

Stewart also listens while she puts her little ones down for a nap, which helps her relax and enjoy what she says can be a frustrating experience.

Like many people with such full days, Stewart often has a difficult time falling asleep. But she finds audiobooks help her here, too. On her blog, Stewart describes an all-too-familiar phenomenon: When her oldest was a newborn and sleeping in 45-minute fits, it was hard for her to wind down and get to sleep. “That’s when I discovered a weird trick that really helped me fall asleep before I’d been in bed for 15 minutes: I listen to audiobooks,” she wrote. “Because my brain is following a story, it stops spinning, relaxes, and bam! I’m dreaming.”

She still uses this technique to fall asleep after her action-packed days, even though her kids are old enough to sleep through the night. She listens to books she knows — especially the Harry Potter series and anything by Jane Austen — and the voices of her favorite narrators and the comforting familiarity of the text lulls her right to sleep.

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https://audiblerange.com/the-listening-life/homeschool-help-listening-adds-up-to-learning/AudiobooksBrainEducationKidsScienceThe Listening LifeYA/TeensTue, 12 Sep 2017 11:54:46 -0500Feel The Love With Narrator Andi Arndt, A Romance Fan FavoriteIt's not uncommon to see listeners call out narrator Andi Arndt's clear, welcoming, and passionate voice as "sublime," or rave about how she "makes you feel all the feels." Arndt has been an actor, producer, director, and vocal coach, all of which has clearly come into play in her work on the Stage Dive, The Royals, Beneath series, and others.

Note: Text has been edited and may not match audio exactly.

Katie O'Connor: So you're obviously a very prolific narrator, and your work spans multiple genres. But you really emerged as one of the queens of romance. What draws you to this genre?

Andi Arndt: Well, I was offered the opportunity to do the very first Kylie Scott Stage Dive title by Macmillan Audio, and that was several years ago. That was not my first romance, but it was the first kind of blockbustery-feeling romance that I had done. So it wasn't so much that I was trying to get into it and do more of it, it was more like I got this invitation and I decided to go to the party, and then I found out it was a pretty fun party.

KO: And yeah, after that Stage Dive series took off, you really developed a cult following of your own.

AA: It felt that way, too. It was really an amazing thing as it unfolded. As the titles kept coming out and people started awaiting the next title in the series, and I started wondering what's the next one gonna be and what's it gonna be like ... I got caught up in it myself. So it was fun.

KO: Speaking of Stage Dive, you've lent your voice to rockstar romance, obviously, and also royal romance. Do you have a favorite micro-genre or trope?

AA: Well, there's something I like about all the different worlds within romance. I guess what I really like is variety. I would never want to do all of one kind of romance. But having said that, one of my favorite types of characters is I guess what you might call the regular girl, who finds herself either having access to someone she thought was out of her league or finds herself in a situation she never thought she would be in. I think those are a lot of fun.

"[While recording Marriage Games, Sebastian York and I] would go to lunch together every day across the street from the studio and just really have some deep conversations..."

KO: Almost like reiterations of the Cinderella story.

AA: Yeah. But that goes for the rockstar romance. That goes for situations where a woman is in a ... like Take Me Back, by Meghan March. It starts with a woman who is going on a trip with her husband, hoping to save her marriage, and it twists and turns into a romantic-suspense direction, and she finds herself needing to, sort of ... fight some crime!

KO: Be the hero, yeah.

AA: Exactly.

KO: Are there any books that have made you blush when performing? Or have you really seen it all at this point?

AA: Well, when I first was asked to do things that are more in the romantica [genre] and more explicit than that direction, at first there were definitely some moments where I encountered some things that were new to me or that were ... I was glad I was alone in my booth. [Laughs] And I won't say that I've read it all, but it's funny sometimes. I have two teenage daughters and they'll say something that they don't think a mom is supposed to know about, and then they'll sort of like shush each other. And I just go, "You know, whatever it is, I probably have said it out loud multiple times, so just go for it. We can talk about it."

KO: No boundaries here.

"Credit really goes to the authors for writing these kind of very modern women with very strong sensibilities. I appreciate their stories."

AA: Yeah. Then they get weirded out and they go away.

KO: You're like, "You can maybe listen to these in a couple of years."

AA: There's really nothing that I've narrated that I, at this point, would not allow my daughters to listen to, because today's romance has a lot of very good messages, in the big-picture sense of the word, about what women should expect in their relationships and even what men can expect in relationships, in terms of an equal say in how things unfold in and out of the bedroom.

KO: I've listened to my fair share of romance audiobooks that you've narrated, and I think you are drawn to these sort of strong women in these books, which is one thing that I also really appreciate about the narratives themselves.

AA: Oh, I'm glad that that's coming across. If it's not on the page, I can't convey it. So credit really goes to the authors for writing these kind of very modern women with very strong sensibilities. I appreciate their stories, first of all.

AA: Yeah. And so when we talk on the phone to coordinate what we're gonna do, there's part of my narrator brain that's also just enjoying the fact that I get to talk on the phone with my co-narrator: This is great.

KO: So that was also one of my questions: If you've met or spoken with any of your male counterparts. So Shane East is a yes. But Sebastian York? Zachary Webber? Do you have relationships with these men?

AA: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I talk with Shane more, like when it's time to work, we'll correspond, we'll sometimes get on the phone. We send each other samples back and forth to make sure that we're doing similar things with the same characters. I've been talking with Zachary Webber quite a lot in the last week or so because we've got just, rapid fire, like four projects in a row that we're doing together between now and I guess the 10th of September. It's just like boom, boom, boom, boom. And then probably the one that I know the best is Sebastian York because we've met in person a couple times. And we worked in the studio at the same time on Marriage Games, which I did under my pseudonym [Elena Wolfe], and which we won an Audie for this year.

KO: That's amazing. I'm having such a fangirl moment right now. I think our listeners are going to love the fact that you two know each other.

AA: Oh, when we were in the studio together working on that, we would work and then it would be time for lunch, and you would think that we would want a break from each other, but we really get along well and have a lot to talk about. And so we would go to lunch together every day across the street from the studio and just really have some deep conversations about some of the topics that the book brought up. It's really gratifying to have such cool colleagues.

KO: Do you have a favorite among your non-romance books?

AA: Well, I've really had some great memoirs come to me, biographies and memoirs. There's two in particular from the last year or so that I can think of that were just unique lives that ... things that you would never think of experiencing. So one was a memoir by a woman who grew up in Fairfield, Iowa. Her mom was into transcendental meditation. And the Maharishi bought a defunct college in Fairfield and turned it into this like Maharishi university.

KO: Oh, wow.

AA: So talk about "town and gown." You have like these Maharishi university students living and dressing their way, and then you had this Iowa farm community living and dressing its way. So it was kind of like what it's like to grow up in that. That was pretty amazing. And the other one, [which] I did last January, was a memoir by a woman who skied on every continent on the planet. She took a year to do it, and she skied four million vertical feet in a year. That was amazing, too, because I'm not really a skier, but because of the book, I got to go along with her on that journey.

KO: Yeah, live vicariously.

AA: So I love, love memoirs.

KO: That's great. You mentioned that you have a lot of projects going on with Zachary Webber right now. So what are you working on that you're really excited about that's coming up?

AA: Well, today I just finished Corinne Michaels' new book, which is called We Own Tonight.

KO: Great.

AA: And that's actually a rockstar romance. So people who are into rockstar romances don't have long to wait for that one. That comes out on the 12th of September. And then today I'm doing Dear Bridget, by Vi Keeland and Penelope Ward, and that's coming out on the 18th of September. Then after that, I'm working on part two of a two-part -- I guess -- duet by Laurelin Paige. Because I already did Dirty Filthy Rich Men, and so this one is Dirty Filthy Rich Love, and that one comes out also in September. So I'm busy.

KO: You're super busy. And fans will be excited to know that there's a lot more coming from you through the end of this year.

AA: And I should also say, I just finished a suspense thriller with some romance elements to it, by Christina Dodd. And that's my second one for her through Macmillan. I'm hoping to do more of hers. It's a great ride, the whole suspense thing.

KO: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I really appreciate it.

AA: Yeah, thank you! It's wonderful to talk romance.

KO: One of my favorite topics.

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https://audiblerange.com/arts-culture/feel-the-love-with-narrator-andi-arndt-a-romance-fan-favorite/Arts & CultureAudiobooksInterviewsNarratorsRomanceWed, 06 Sep 2017 16:19:39 -0500For Some Lucky Fans, Writing A Star Wars Novel Is A Dream Come TrueIt’s been nearly 40 years since Star Wars hit theaters, but thanks to the box-office success of The Force Awakens and Rogue One — and one of the most devoted fandoms ever — the appetite for new Star Wars stories is stronger than ever. Although The Last Jedi doesn’t come out until the end of the year, if you can’t wait that long for your fix, there’s another option: a slew of new novels that explore everything from Princess Leia’s time in the Galactic Senate to the inner workings of Rebel infantry.

Writing Star Wars novels sounds like a dream job for most fans, so how do you get a gig like that, anyway? Although there’s no single path, most of the authors behind the licensed books are established novelists, and they also tend to be huge fans in their own right — some even got their start by writing fan fiction.

“I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a kid, honestly, and you’re darn tootin’ that I wrote Star Wars fanfic back then,” says Chuck Wendig, the author of Star Wars: Aftermath. As an adult, he began scripting pen-and-paper role-playing games and eventually moved into novels, but caught his big break with an offhand comment on Twitter about wanting to write a Star Wars book. “As it turns out, I possessed the Force for the span of time it took to compose and post that tweet, because it worked,” says Wendig.

Claudia Gray, the author of Star Wars: Lost Stars and Star Wars: Bloodline,also got her start as a fanfic writer before moving over to original young adult novels and, ultimately, to Star Wars books. “When I got the email that led to Lost Stars, I was honestly stunned,” says Gray.

Writing licensed Star Wars novels is a very different process from writing fan fiction. In the world of fanfic, there are no rules, but in the Lucasfilm-approved world of official storytelling, there are plenty. Some of those rules are obvious — new stories can’t conflict with old ones — while others are harder to discern.

“You can’t violate the ineffable ‘Star Wars feel,’ which is both the simplest and most difficult of rules to master,” says Alexander Freed, author of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Battlefront: Twilight Company. “It means describing a universe where absolute good and absolute evil really, truly exist, but where the space in between can be a little less clear cut.”

“You don’t declare the Force to be generated by an evil space jellyfish”

Since the Star Wars universe is shared, not just by the fans who enjoy it, but by many writers and artists working on films, novels, and comics, there’s a certain amount of care required for playing in the communal sandbox. As Freed puts it, you can’t break the toys so that no one else can play with them.

“You don’t reveal Luke’s father is ‘actually’ Han. You don’t declare the Force to be generated by an evil space jellyfish, and so forth,” says Freed. “You respect that a lot of other people are telling a lot of other stories and that those stories need space to grow and thrive. There’s basic common sense involved and the courtesy required to work in a shared universe.”

Writing new stories naturally requires that authors bring fresh ideas to the table, but always in ways that feel consistent with the characters, worlds, and overall tone that fans know and love. “New characters have to fit into the tapestry as if they’d always been there, just lurking a bit off-camera,” says Timothy Zahn, author of the just-released book Thrawn.

From the outset, writers work with the Star Wars Story Group, a division created by Lucasfilm to ensure the consistency of its vast universe and avoid continuity errors and conflicts as new books, comics, or games are added to the official canon.

Inevitably, there are occasional snags. While she was writing Star Wars: Lost Stars, Gray decided to place Darth Vader’s flagship, the Devastator, in one location, only to get a note from the Story Group that the ship simply couldn’t be there. “I said something like, ‘It’s an imaginary ship in our heads, so it could be anywhere?’” says Gray. “But not in this case! Other canon had already done something with the Devastator in that window of time.”

Rather than scripting tales that involve the most iconic characters or events, some authors seek out times and places that are relatively undeveloped so that they have more room to explore without stepping on existing history. When Freed started working on the novel Battlefront: Twilight Company, which follows a Rebel military unit during the Galactic Civil War, he spent time researching whether there had already been any significant writing about the non-elite infantry of the Rebellion. “I knew broadly the sort of story I wanted to tell — an unglamorous story of front-line grunts — but the particulars were dependent on what already existed,” says Freed.

“I also researched broken arms and how much pain the average human can withstand before she passes out”

Writing these books can involve a lot of research, not just about the Star Wars universe itself, but real-world subjects as well, from politics to biology to physics. Preparing to tell the story of Battlefront: Twilight Company, for example, involved a lot of reading about military history, particularly modern civil wars and insurgencies.

“The Rebellion of the Star Wars galaxy is young, loosely organized, poorly equipped, and packed with barely trained volunteers,” says Freed. “In those respects, it can resemble various real-life militia and paramilitary groups more than it does the U.S. Armed Forces.”

E.K. Johnston, the author of the novel Star Wars: Ahsoka, read up on weapons and fighting styles for her story about the fan-favorite Jedi turned Rebel, Ahsoka Tano. “I also researched broken arms and how much pain the average human can withstand before she passes out, but that wasn’t very much fun,” jokes Johnston.

Although official Star Wars canon was redefined in 2014 to focus on the films and exclude the complex “expanded universe” created by decades of novels, comics, and games, some authors have found ways to drop little references from those older stories into their new books for longtime readers.

“I’ve brought in a couple of characters from my other Star Wars books, but only in small roles, as Easter eggs for fans of the Legends books and stories,” says Zahn.

While aligning new stories with the larger world is an important part of working in a shared universe, the most important rule of writing a Star Wars novel is the simplest: Tell an engaging story that grabs readers and doesn’t let them go.

“At its deepest core, there is really very little difference between writing a Star Wars novel and writing any other novel,” says Zahn. “In both cases, the goal of the storyteller is to create an exciting saga with characters the readers care about, put in some twists and turns and surprises, and then bring it all to a satisfying conclusion. If [it] succeeds on all those levels, then I’ve done my job.”

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https://audiblerange.com/arts-culture/for-some-lucky-fans-writing-a-star-wars-novel-is-a-dream-come-true/Arts & CultureAuthorsPro tipsSci-fi & FantasyTV/FilmThu, 31 Aug 2017 10:02:27 -0500Books Where Eclipses Loom LargeLong ago, inexplicable astronomic events like eclipses were thought to be bad omens — hey, imagine how unsettling it would be to see the moon or sun suddenly disappear from view, with no warning or understanding of how it happened. Today, an eclipse causes more joy than worry: Eclipse chasers swear they feel a spiritual reaction that goes way beyond a merely overwhelming sense of awe … perhaps because eclipses remind us that no matter how much we now understand about the universe, our knowledge is not yet enough to overshadow mystery; mystery continues to flare out from the edges of what we know, inviting wild, mythlike narratives.

So long as we continue to create and enjoy these narratives, we are connected to our ancient selves, our most possible selves. Perhaps, an eclipse suggests, we do not yet know how the story will go. How our story, as a species, will go.

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https://audiblerange.com/playlisted/books-where-eclipses-loom-large/AudiobooksCultureMystery & ThrillerNaturePlaylistedSci-fi & FantasyScienceFri, 18 Aug 2017 10:23:15 -0500When Should Writers Narrate Their Own Work?Whenever James Frey — the best-selling author of the controversial memoir A Million Little Pieces, as well as novels like Bright Shiny Morning and the Endgame trilogy — completes a new novel, he pitches the same narrator for the accompanying audiobook: himself. And every time the answer is a polite but firm “No.”

“My publishers always say my voice isn’t very good for it,” says Frey, who speaks in a gravelly tenor. “It’s not worth the fight for me.”

Instead, the duties are handed over to professional actors like Hell or High Water star Ben Foster, who narrated Bright Shiny Morning. Frey is a big fan. “I’d love to have him do them all,” he says. “He’s great and has a cool voice.”

“The majority of people in the world are just not particularly good at acting.”

Ah yes, the “cool voice,” an essential asset when you expect a listener to settle in for a 100,000-word reading. Views about what constitutes cool when it comes to audiobook narration vary wildly, but one thing is certain: Some authors are invariably born with “it.” Only they tend to be few and far between. “Most authors should stick to writing and leave the audiobook narration to others,” says Basil Sands, a self-published writer and actor. “This is in no way demeaning the authors, by the way. The majority of people in the world are just not particularly good at acting.”

Michelle Cobb, executive director of the Audio Publishers Association, agrees. “They don’t realize how hard it is,” she says. “You think you can just walk into a studio and get the words — your own words — out.” But spending dozens of hours in a recording booth (the rule of thumb is generally two hours of recording time to get one hour of narration) is a lot more taxing than most writers expect. “It’s surprisingly difficult to do things like stay still for the microphone, or to even wear the right clothes. Standing still is incredibly physically rigorous,” Cobb says.

There’s no denying that reading one’s own work can carry with it certain advantages. Says author Sands, “They (authors) know the characters much more intimately.” While narrating is a tall order to expect of someone who primarily identifies with the quiet, keyboard-tapping solitude of writing, Sands adds that “If it works, it is truly rewarding.”

One of the most lauded double threats in the business, writer and narrator, is Neil Gaiman. The ability to do character work — creating through voice alone dozens of characters of differing sexes and ages — is a skill that trips up many a writer-turned-narrator. Not Gaiman. The English fantasy and science-fiction author reads many of his books and “brings a very interesting take on his own work,” says Cobb.

She points to his solo-voiced reading of his The Graveyard Book, about an orphaned boy raised by ghosts, and Gaiman’s ability to voice individual characters at various ages and phases of life. That 2008 audiobook won an Audie Award, the field’s highest honor — and many Gaiman fans prefer it even to the full-cast audiobook production released in 2014.

And what if a novel contains words, phrases, and concepts that entirely elude translation? That was the case with Khaled Hosseini’s breakthrough novel, The Kite Runner, about two boys growing up in Kabul, Afghanistan. His facility with the pronunciations of certain Dari and Pashto words and terms of endearment ensured the musical flow of his moving tale. Said one Audible commenter, “The accent and pronunciation made such a difference to the book overall.”

There is a correlation between authors who give exciting live readings and those who do great audiobook narration. Chuck Palahniuk’s public appearances were likened by the Guardian to a visit to “an extreme amusement park.” Audience members are even said to have literally passed out during his rendition of “Guts,” a notorious short story about sexual injury that instructs the listener to hold his or her breath for the duration of the tale. To date, Palahniuk has recorded narration to only one of his novels — 2001’s Choke, whose explicit and shocking content (it’s about a sex addict who fakes choking at restaurants to pay his mother’s medical bills) benefits from the author’s unflappable, deadpan delivery.

As for memoirists, it would seem that politicians have an ability to connect with an audience — unique oratorical skills honed through countless stump speeches delivered on endless campaign trails. But that can also have its pitfalls: In her review of Tony Blair’s reading of his best-selling 1997 autobiography, A Journey, the New Yorker’s Elizabeth Minkel writes that the UK’s former prime minister sounded “… tired. Hoarse and a little angry… But most of all, he sounded like he was giving a speech. It was as though he was trying to court my vote with anecdotes and accomplishments, rather than simply weave some kind of narrative.” By contrast, Minkel writes, Sarah Palin’s narration of Going Rogue “doesn’t sound like she’s giving a speech — but that doesn’t mean it’s a good reading, either.”

Spending dozens of hours in a recording booth is a lot more taxing than most writers expect.

Certainly Palin’s highly familiar cadences and rounded Alaskan accent gave the reading a certain authenticity that would have eluded, say, Dame Judi Dench performing the same material, since nailing accents can trip up even the most highly trained actors. Authors, on the other hand, frequently write what they know. So, when the late Frank McCourt narrates Angela’s Ashes, he captures the nuances of the various regional brogues, and even sings the tunes of the various songs sprinkled throughout the book.

Kentucky-raised novelist Barbara Kingsolver, meanwhile, lends her authentic American southern twang to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, about her family’s foray into natural eating. That audiobook also includes sections read by her husband, Steven Hopp, and daughter, Camille Kingsolver — portions they wrote themselves — as well as some ambient sound effects such as animals. The combination gives the audiobook a journalistic feel, akin to a supersized episode of This American Life.

Speaking of This American Life, the beloved public radio series (and other platforms like it that helped to launch the current podcast craze) has served as a fertile training ground for some of the best-loved self-narrating authors, including Sarah Vowell, the late David Rakoff, and, in a class by himself, David Sedaris. The witty essayist behind Me Talk Pretty One Day got his start in 1992 with a reading of his uproarious essay “SantaLand Diaries” on NPR, which led to his first book of short stories, Barrel Fever, in 1994, and a regular spot on the This American Life roster when that show debuted the following year. All that microphone time helped Sedaris hone his spoken-word persona. Sedaris narrates all his books and “makes me cry laugh-tears,” says Kerry Garvin of the Bushwick Book Club Seattle. “His dry sense of humor is captured perfectly in his audiobooks, and he is good at accents and does an impeccable Billie Holiday impression.”

Most of the time, there is no replacement for solid acting chops, and specifically a theater background. “They have vocal training, they know characterizations, and they are able to bring the required stores of boundless energy you really need to bring a book effectively to life,” says Cobb. Perhaps that’s why some of the most popular audiobooks are by famous actors reading their own memoirs: They benefit from the best of both worlds, having the performance dexterity required of the task and an intimate familiarity with the source material. Among them, few do a better job than Tina Fey, whose 2011 memoir, Bossypants, is enormously popular on Audible. “I would never read a Tina Fey book in print — I would only want to hear it read in her own voice,” notes Cobb. “Then again, I wouldn’t listen to her read Jane Eyre, either. But that’s not her particular skillset.”

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https://audiblerange.com/arts-culture/when-should-writers-narrate-their-own-work/Arts & CultureAudibleAudiobooksAuthorratorsAuthorsNarratorsVoiceThu, 17 Aug 2017 10:08:17 -0500Exploring 'The Butterfly Effect' Of Free Online Porn With Jon RonsonJon Ronson would like to talk about the porn industry for a moment. The 50-year-old British author has made a career of enthusiastically exploring topics most people won’t touch — public shaming, dark personality disorders, and paranormal military operation. But his new Audible Original series, The Butterfly Effect, tackles a topic that nearly everyone is familiar with, but few will discuss: online pornography. Specifically, how tech is changing the way porn is made and consumed … and the unexpected consequences both are having, for better or worse. While such a thorny topic might prove problematic for others, Ronson, with his gentle Welsh dialect and inquistive, non-judgmental reporting style — has started an authentic and thoughtful conversation. Audible Editor Benjamin Korman sat down with Ronson to discuss his approach and what he hopes you’ll take away from the show.

Benjamin Korman: You’ve covered all sorts of taboo topics in your career, psychopathy, public shaming, and secret cabals. What drew you to the subject of pornography?

Jon Ronson: I want to tell stories about mysterious worlds. What drew me to the porn world is actually really similar to what drew me to the story about public shaming, which is that people act badly towards porn people. They watch their porn for free, they watch pirated porn and don’t think about the consequences. There’s a line where I ask a porn fan if she ever thinks about or knows the names of the porn stars that she watches, and she says, “No, I don’t. I don’t know their names. It’s like when you kill a deer — you don’t name it, because then you can’t eat it.”

I’m always interested in destigmatizing people. For all the sex-positive people out there and all the anti-slut-shaming people out there, there’s still a hell of a lot of stigma when it comes to porn stars. People don’t want to think of them as humans, and I always like to portray people as humans. Especially [the kinds of] people other people don’t.

BK: How would you define a “butterfly effect”?

JR: Edward Lorenz was the man who coined the phrase “the butterfly effect.” He was a meteorologist and he posed a question at a conference, which then became very famous: “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil create a tornado in Texas?” Whether it was an actual meteorological phenomenon, I don’t know. But it’s the idea of a small [action] — when you throw a stone in a pond — and consequences grow wider and wider and wider. I think some of the places that we end up are huge, from such a tiny idea. An idea being, you know, this kid Fabian coming up with a business plan to get rich from providing free online porn.

BK : How do you think that creation, Pornhub, is going to change peoples’ relationship with pornography?

JR: It’s done one positive thing, which is make a generation of young people feel less ashamed about sex, because it’s normalized porn for a lot of people. I think a lot of young people are less screwed up about sex and porn than people of my generation.

But there are an awful lot of negative consequences as well. One is that it’s how [essentially] every child in the world learns about sex these days. Pornhub is educating a generation of people, and not necessarily in the best way; these days, if you’re not a “teen” and you’re not a “MILF,” you can’t get work. It’s a long, fallow period between “teens” and “MILFs.”

BK: Speaking of negative consequences, what story devastated you the most?

JR: There’s really only one dark story in this series. And that was deliberate. I didn’t want [the show] to be a gut-wrenching story of revenge porn. But the story of the boy in Oklahoma with autism who was trying to impress a girl — the way he did it was to send a text of dialogue he had seen in porn films. And, as you can imagine, that went down very, very badly, and now he’s stuck on the sex offenders’ registry for the next 23 years, which turns out to limit what you can do in your life quite extraordinarily.

BK: Did any stories pleasantly surprise you?

JR: My favorite story in the series is the “bespoke porn” series. Traditional porn is dying because of all the piracy on Pornhub, but out of the ashes, there’s this new industry rising in the valley, and it’s bespoke porn: teams of professional porn people who will make an entire film for just one viewer. What an amazing way to see inside peoples’ souls! To see the bespoke porn films they commission. And it was very sweet. It was a really sweet relationship between the producers of these custom porn films and the people who were commissioning them.

A funny moment from episode two where Ronson learns about a rather particular customized porn:

BK: The idea of following ripple effects: How does this method of chasing a story differ from the other writing and reporting work you do?

JR: This is the first time that the narrative structure, the narrative conceit, superseded the story itself. I’ve noticed over the past few years that on the internet, nobody thinks about consequences. I thought a butterfly effect would be a sort of interesting way of telling a story about consequences. I like to think of parameters for whatever I’m doing. I like to think of a structure and set of rules.

In my book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, I had a set of rules that I would only tell shaming stories of private individuals who I felt had been disproportionately punished for not particularly serious offenses. So that immediately cuts out a million shaming stories: It cuts out every celebrity who gets publicly shamed, it cuts out everybody who’s been publicly shamed for serious offenses like sexual harassment, and so on.

BK: Do you think that The Butterfly Effect will help destigmatize porn and the people who make it?

JR: Yes, I do. We did a live version [of The Butterfly Effect] and invited some porn people to the show. And at the end of the show, someone said to me: “You know, this could be the first time anyone’s ever treated us as humans, the first time any mainstream journalist has come in and hasn’t pitied us or attacked us, or come in with some kind of ideological baggage.” [Journalists] always feel this kind of urge to portray [porn stars] in some objectifying way. Either pitying them or portraying them as victims, or portraying them as bad. Or if they’re not bad, the porn viewers are bad … but something’s bad. And our show doesn’t do that. And I think it’s really rare and I think they’re really pleased that they trusted us and we didn’t betray their trust.

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https://audiblerange.com/arts-culture/exploring-the-butterfly-effect-of-free-online-porn-with-jon-ronson/Arts & CultureAudibleAudible ChannelsInterviewsWed, 16 Aug 2017 12:09:00 -0500Around The World In 8 ListensMaybe you’re wading in a kiddie pool instead of getting sprayed by Iguazu Falls. Or your idea of an exotic vacation is visiting the next neighborhood over, not closing your eyes and hopping to whatever country your finger hits on the globe. Or perhaps you would simply appreciate a few trusty narrators-as-guides as you gear up for your carefully researched seasonal travels — it’s hard not to be swept away by Bill Bryson’s curiosity for Australia or Murakami’s magical view of Japan.

No matter your plans (or lack thereof), there’s a listen to suit you.

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https://audiblerange.com/playlisted/around-the-world-in-8-listens/AudiobooksLiteratureNaturePlaylistedRecommendationsTravelThu, 10 Aug 2017 10:48:06 -0500Heart-Throbs: Our Crushiest Romance Heroes (And Heroine)I wasn’t always a Romance fan. I stumbled upon the genre during a particularly difficult period in my life. I needed pure escapism (complete with some HEAs), and this was the genre that delivered. Once discovered, Romance became my go-to genre, and in turn I’ve become the go-to person at Audible whenever questions about the genre arise.

I’ve spent years hunting for my perfect book boyfriend. I tend to veer toward rugged, reformed bad boys — but what I’ve learned is that no matter the type of leading man, what makes all the difference for me is the performance. From Sebastian York to Shane East to Shayna Thibodeaux (is there something about the letter “S”?), I find my next listen based on the narrator more often than even the micro-genre. Check out my all-time favorite book boyfriends (and even my favorite book girlfriend) below.

Three years ago, I went through a particularly rough patch when a trifecta of loss, trauma, and Manhattan winter converged right on my oversized amygdala. I was freelancing at the time and was so blisteringly alone and afraid, I couldn’t eat, focus, or hold still. I hated being confined, but I hated even more being on the icy streets tucked inside my puffy coat, a scarf covering everything but my eyes, which were frozen shut from crying. My head was garbage — it was like the world’s worst death metal band had taken up residence in it and was just clanging away at full volume. I needed a different sound, other voices.

At first, all I wanted were audiobooks about panic and anxiety. It helps, in the throes of panic, to be reminded of the basics (yes, it’s a physiological thing that scientists are aware of; no, it won’t kill you or cause you to go on a homocidal rampage in the subway). Fortunately, I found Dr. Claire Weekes’ Pass Through Panic. Dr. Weekes is the Australian grandmother I wish upon all my anxiety-suffering brethren and sistren. Her voice has that comforting “knowledgable doctor” thing, but with the sage warmth of someone who’s pouring you tea from a pot with a cozy around it.

No one is doing great all the time, they reminded me. And anyway, how boring would that be?

The worst of the panic passed in about a week, and I improved enough to wander the city in a shaky fugue state, stopping occasionally to weep on a bench (New York City is THE place to publicly cry and still be left alone). As I walked, a voice called out from deep within me: Celebrity memoirs, it said. You need all the celebrities right now.

This doesn’t seem like much of a stretch, that someone enduring dire internal catastrophe would want something light and entertaining. But the books that I remember most fondly from this time were not necessarily “funny ha-ha.” (Then again, I was in no position to LOL at anything. See: Anxiety.) It was enough that their voices were recognizable, that these familiar people were telling me intimate stories from their lives, which were shot through with fear, misfortune, self-doubt … but also a commitment to getting back up again, loving their messy humanness and bringing it into their art. No one is doing great all the time, they reminded me. And anyway, how boring would that be?

All told, this “rough patch” lasted about three months, and I eventually emerged, raw, tired, and a lot kinder to myself. There’s an Albert Camus quote I’ve always held close: “In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” Resilience is what awaits us on the other side of suffering. And gratitude.

Thanks to the memoirs below, I remember that winter not as one of despair, but transition; when I was listening to these books, I was not lonely. I was healing alone in great company.

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https://audiblerange.com/playlisted/10-memoirs-that-lifted-me-out-of-anxiety/AudiobooksAuthorratorsComedyMemoirPlaylistedRecommendationsSelf-developmentSat, 05 Aug 2017 10:52:13 -0500'The X-Files: Cold Cases' - Meet The Modern Audio DramaSomething is chasing FBI agent Dana Scully. It’s not clear what it is, but its wordless screams inspire horror. Gillian Anderson pants, and her voice grows strained, her footsteps becoming faster and louder. She runs down a hallway that echoes as if it’s a mile long. She stops to round a corner, and you expect to see the monster, or whatever it is that’s chasing her. But there’s no monster to see. There’s nothing to see. Rather, you hear how grotesque the thing is, because this isn’t a televised episode of The X-Files — it’s an episode of a new audio drama, The X-Files: Cold Cases, based on Joe Harris’ graphic novels of the same name.

Yes, audio drama. Not a podcast, not simply an audio series, and certainly not an audiobook. A fully formed, sound-tracked piece of entertainment created by professional sound designers and voice actors.

Audio drama in 2017 is at once both innovative and nostalgic. The genre hearkens back to the the era when radio was still king. That’s when voice actor William B. Davis, the show’s Cigarette Smoking Man, got his start. “I did a lot of radio drama in the ’50s, when it was actually live,” he says, explaining that nothing was recorded or even re-aired. These live plays were broadcast across the globe.

The programming was vast, with artier offerings like The Mercury Theatre on the Air (famous for its 1939 War of the Worlds episode) running alongside so-called trashy soap operas, such as The Archers, which began on the BBC in 1950 and is still running today. These stories were created by actors and musicians who hoped to replicate the drama that could only be found on the stage or in cinemas. And then of course, television entered the living room, and slowly but surely peoples’ eyes went along with their ears to the magical world of in-home motion picture.

The genre is poised to be more relevant now than it has been in decades.

As the appeal of television grew along with its program offerings, narrative radio suffered. The BBC never stopped believing in the medium, but the United States eventually abandoned much of its radio drama production — but that doesn’t mean that audio drama is lost to time. In fact, the genre is poised to be more relevant now than it has been in decades, thanks in part to the technical advances that have altered sound design in the decades since its heyday. Sure, as Davis recalls, he was producing audio drama in the ’70s that “was a lot like film, where we’d do the acting independently and then they’d add in sound and music.” But, then, they didn’t have the voice manipulation or sound alteration tools they have today. They also didn’t have the starpower of The X-Files.

With the return of Anderson and David Duchovny, as well as Davis and other key players, Cold Cases is one of the highest-profile audio dramas to be released in a long, long time. But it’s certainly not the first and only. There’s a Jane Austen adaptation, Northanger Abbey, just released from Audible’s UK studios, and 2016’s frighteningly real Alien: Out of the Shadows won awards for its sound design. Remarkable, too, was the Haley Joel Osment and Tatiana Maslany-starring Locke & Key, which featured not only elaborate, long-form storytelling, but also innovative sound design, which found actors sometimes recording lines on location — such as in an old house or an open field — rather than in a studio.

As explained by Fred Greenhalgh, the assistant producer and director of Cold Cases who also worked on Locke & Key, every aspect of an audio drama’s sound is taken into consideration. “The footsteps are carefully choreographed with the actor’s performance, so the pace [and] weight of the footfalls, choice of footwear, surface that they are landing on, reverb of the acoustic of the environment in which the footsteps are falling in, etcetera, all are taken into account.” In X-Files, those choices create terrifying chase scenes and an atmosphere of horror.

In Northanger Abbey, terror wasn’t quite the outcome. Rebecca Fenton, a senior commissioning editor at Audible Originals, worked closely on the Austen adaptation, and points to a similar set of sounds utilized to create an opposite mood: one of urbane socializing and leisure. That transportation is key to the success of a literary audio adaptation. “There’s something about horses on cobblestone, the chatter of townspeople talking,” Fenton says. “These sounds transport you to this Regency period. Listening to the series, it really feels like you’re back in the time and place of Jane Austen.”

“That’s the fun of audio-only. You’re leaving a portion of it to the imagination, what they visualize in their head.”

These series are immersive to such an extent that it would be understandable if they were mistaken for the isolated audio from some prestige TV program. But that’s underselling it. It’s not that the atmosphere is so lush and precise that it seems wrong that there’s no image that goes with it, but that it’s so exceptional that it transcends the need for pictures altogether.

That statement may read as hyperbole, but it’s not. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to accomplish. Jamie Mahaffey, the principal sound designer on Cold Cases, describes his job as “making the image jump out of the speakers” and says that, even with visual images, “the sound of it all gives tone and emotion and tells you how to feel.” He goes on to explain that, unlike when working in film, sound designers on audio dramas have to utilize stereo depth and dimension to create a feeling, whether or not that’s one of movement, open space, or a kaleidoscopic acid trip. It makes sense, then, that the intensity of a well-produced audio drama such as Cold Cases is sometimes able to surpass that of a motion picture: In this case, audio is not just a tool used to enhance the emotion — it’s the entire workbench from which a world is created.

Which is why, when Cold Cases series director William Dufris jokingly refers to his duties (and those of director/writer Dirk Maggs) as “god-like in nature,” it’s not entirely untrue. As he tells it, their roles did require a semblance of omnipresence, having recorded, remotely or on location, actors in Florida, Dubai, Vancouver, New England, and Los Angeles. They, along with Mahaffey and Greenhalgh, took those numerous recording sessions and blended them seamlessly with hours of original music and sound effects to create an experience worthy of the inimitable X-Files franchise.

And “experience” would be one of the more apt ways of describing what it’s like to listen to the series. As Mahaffey puts it, “The exciting part is having a movie play out in your mind, that the sound gives you an impression of the visual. That’s the fun of audio-only. You’re leaving a portion of it to the imagination, what they visualize in their head.” With the voices of Davis, Anderson, Duchovny, and their castmates, along with the terrifying noises of whatever monster it is they’re fighting, the imagination doesn’t have to do much.

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https://audiblerange.com/arts-culture/the-x-files-cold-cases-meet-the-modern-audio-drama/Arts & CultureAudibleSci-fi & FantasyTV/FilmFri, 04 Aug 2017 15:44:54 -0500Who Is This Dirk Maggs, And Why Does He Rule So Hard?Over the course of a prolific career, U.K.-based director Dirk Maggs has brought to life the fictional universe of familiar franchises like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series and Alien, with deluxe, detailed soundscapes full of vivid and surprising special effects, developing a form of storytelling that feels truly three-dimensional. Also, as we learned firsthand at Comic-Con in San Diego, he’s a total character, a genuinely nice person, and someone we really want to hang with.

His latest project, the new Audible Original The X-Files: Cold Cases, deploys a full cast, including David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as Agents Mulder and Scully, to adapt TV’s beloved conspiracy drama into something newly unsettling. Audible Range caught up with Maggs to learn about his journey as a storyteller, and why he believes there are no limits to what’s possible in spoken-word audio.

Audible Range: Obviously, audio drama is much older than Audible. Where did this fascination begin for you? Did you listen to a lot of radio as a kid?

Dirk Maggs: I did, actually. Audio drama never really went away in Britain the way that it died off in the U.S. during the 1950s, as television caught on. Here, it stayed. When I was a kid, every Sunday we’d have the radio on while we were having our lunch, and there were certain radio comedy programs from that period, which whenever I hear them I can smell roast beef and gravy. It’s a strange association of things.

It was always in my mind that I would love to work in comedy and radio. I joined the BBC and worked my way from a studio technician up to being a producer, and there was a vacancy in the comedy department, where all the programs I loved as a kid, where people like Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan and John Cleese and all my heroes came through … Douglas Adams with Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, which was just happening as I joined the BBC.

When there was a possibility of a job in this department as a producer, I applied. I had to, for my interview, come up with program ideas, so I thought, “Oh, a birthday program about Superman. And wouldn’t it be fun to actually dramatize some of the comic book material?” We made the Superman tribute a docu-drama where we put him on trial for his life, and prosecuting counsel was Lex Luthor and his defense attorney was Lois Lane. I can’t imagine how quickly the law degrees are conferred in Metropolis, but anyway.

“You could feel that Gillian and David slipped on Mulder and Scully like a pair of really comfortable, well-broken-in shoes.”

It was really fun because we mixed up lots of evidence of his past (obviously excerpts from the comic books) with the witnesses, and in his defense we had Jenette Kahn, who is president of DC [Comics], and we had Dave Gibbons who was co-author of Watchmen who became a good friend to me. And also, because he happened to be coming through the BBC that day and I saw him in a corridor, got Adam West, bless him, who came and [testified] for Superman and was absolutely wonderful.

AR: He just happened to be there on that day?

DM: Well, the BBC was one of those places … I walked in one day with somebody and out of the lift came a really famous Shakespearean actor. Someone like John Gielgud, someone really amazingly famous and old. Then down the stairs from one direction was coming the Archbishop of Canterbury. The other stairs from the basement was coming Frank Zappa, all in one area. I turned to the person I was with and I said, “Only at the BBC would you have this happen.”

AR: What are the things that you think the audio medium allows you to do as a storyteller that movies and TV, or even books, don’t?

DM: Basically, you can do everything in audio [that] you do in those media. The difference is that you, as a listener, you are kind of complicit. You’re not just sitting here absorbing it, letting it wash over you. You’re actually inside it. If you listen, as many people do now to this stuff, on your headphones plugged into your smartphone, you’re more immersed in the action than traditional radio drama listeners. But also, to an extent, more than you are even in a cinema, because in a cinema you’re locked in that seat in the room and your attention is very much directed ahead of you. Whereas if the story is playing out on a screen inside your head, you are in a sense almost physically present at the action.

“Pig squeals are great for alien pain cries.”

It’s funny, I just finished an excerpt of X-Files about five minutes ago. The last couple of scenes were just Mulder and Scully in a situation and talking and moving around the room. I felt, yeah, I am standing in the room with these people, I’m actually there with them. That I think is the gift of it, that it becomes a very unique personal experience.

AR: With the X-Files, it’s going to be especially interesting because I assume that a lot of people listening to it will be fans of the show and the movies, and you have David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson performing their roles, so it’ll be an opportunity for people to really feel that direct comparison between the audio dramas and show.

DM: I’m hoping the fans will realize that they don’t need the pictures, particularly as there’s already visual reference, to be there with Mulder and Scully on what are really fun adventures … a lot of the old characters that have fallen by the wayside in the newer TV series are back and are functioning, and that’s part of the fun of it, too.

I’m hoping it will absorb them and I’m hoping they will feel they’ve gone back to the universe of Mulder and Scully and are enjoying that chemistry.

AR: I imagine you are looking for some very specific things when you cast for voice acting. But in this case you were working with Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny and several performers from the X Files TV show. Was that process at all weird or challenging for the actors? How did you get them in the head space of performing their roles for a different medium?

DM: It’s a lot easier when the actors know the characters they’re playing. You could feel that Gillian and David slipped on Mulder and Scully like a pair of really comfortable, well-broken-in shoes.

Particularly, I was at Gillian’s session and … she lives in London so she’s very acquainted with British audio drama and she does a lot of audiobook readings. So really she just got it immediately. David, after a half an hour of finding Mulder without having to have the wardrobe and the makeup and the lines, really enjoyed himself. Actually, that was the fun part. Hearing how the cast were enjoying getting back into the characters.

AR: There are a lot of sound effects in your work. What do you look for in sound effects? Presumably you’re looking for different things than someone working in a visual medium would.

DM: Really, what I’m looking for is a strange kind of realism, and it’s interesting because we’ve had several sound designers working on the series and it’s been interesting to see their take on things and then to discuss and find ways where we mutually feel we’re moving forward. What I mean by that is, and I’ll take Alien for an example, certain of the effects for Alien, we were very fortunate to get from Fox and from Creative Assembly, the company who made the Alien Isolation video game, which was superb.

I would’ve happily spent six months making new Alien sound effects. It was rather wonderful to be able to plug into their existing stuff, but there was still plenty I had to make myself, and attacking an alien, when no such creature exists, you have to think in a sort of lateral way about how to create it. I did plunder pretty much every animal I have in my sound effects store for an alien being killed at one point, and I think there was a tiger and a badger and a pig in there. Pigs are very good. Pig squeals are great for alien pain cries.

The fun part, as well, is you can use an acoustic to suggest something, and particularly in episode two of X-Files: Cold Cases, when they first go back to the old office and Mulder walks in and he says, “You know what? I think that’s my sandwich in the bin that I left last time I was in here,” just for fun, even though it wasn’t in the comic itself, I had his voice sound as if he poked his head actually in the trash can to check the sandwich.

AR: You’ve assumed a number of titles on these audio dramas and I’m wondering if you think “director” makes sense as a descriptor for what you do on these projects?

DM: Yeah, it’s funny. In the days when I was at the BBC we were known as “producers,” but actually we did everything. We booked the talent, we directed the actors, we supervised the edit. Since moving more and more into the field of audio drama — “audio theater,” “audio movies” is how I describe what I do — yeah, I think “director” does still work, because certainly there is a certain amount of pushing actors about, and so on. But it’s kind of weird, because over the years I’ve become a one stop shop: I adapt the script, I push the actors around, and then I add the noises.

It’s a team effort always, but you do have to kind of have a working knowledge of most of the technology you’re dealing with. I guess in the same way that if Ridley Scott walks onto a film set, he will ask the camera man what lens he’s using and will understand what the camera man means when he tells him.

AR: With something like The X-Files, we already have a sense of what that’s supposed to look like visually. With [the BBC production of Neil Gaiman’s] Good Omenswe might not. Do you work with visuals and storyboards when you’re developing an audio piece?

DM: No, although I think you’ve made me want to try it now. The thing is, in the case of X-Files, I kind of have the storyboard in front of me, which is Joe [Harris] and Matthew Dow Smith and all the other artists’ work. In a way that work’s been done.

What I do is, I do write the scripts in movie format: Dialogue speech is in the center of the page and all of that, because that helps me think visually. I just write the story I want to see in my mental cinema. When people say, “Well, how should I write for this? Should I change anything?” I say, “No, write the movie. Write the movie you want to see, then worry about how you’re gonna make it work in sound alone.”

“Write the movie you want to see, then worry about how you’re gonna make it work in sound alone.”

And actually, when you’ve written the movie you want to see and then figure out how to change it for sound, maybe you’ll change 10% of your script in order to accommodate a way of describing a visual event. But, if you’re really clever and you know how sound effects work, and how acoustics work, and you know how you can work with actors to make them feel complicit and to get them actually creating in the moment, in the room, you can make absolute magic, visual magic.

I was working on Alien: River of Pain earlier this year with Colin Salmon who was playing Captain Brackett. Colin was great because after a bit he developed this stance at the microphone. He would stand there like he was surfing an imaginary wave as he was saying the lines, and that was how Colin got in the zone to create this character. One of the great things about doing this in the studio is that occasionally there is a camera in the room, but usually there isn’t, so people can just look as stupid as they want and it really doesn’t matter.

Another thing about the medium that I love is the fact that nobody can see what is really going on, it’s all smoke and mirrors which makes it really exciting.

AR: Is it important to you to respect the already existing universe of franchises like Alien and X-Files, or do you feel totally emboldened to create something new?

DM: No, I’m always aware … it’s vital to respect what’s gone before, and especially for X-Files and Alien — these have huge numbers of people for whom this is important and you have to honor that. I spend an awful lot of time trying to get it right.

“Really I’d like to be doing Shakespeare … that said, I am speaking to you from an office full of toys.”

In [Alien: River of Pain], which is a prequel to Aliens, the James Cameron movie, there are scenes from that movie kind of replicated in the drama. I felt conflicted about that because I don’t want to improve on what’s gone already and Jim Cameron is a brilliant filmmaker. I wanted to bring something new to the party, so what I did was I actually went to these original scripts, the drafts before they did it in the studio. And if you look at the original script and look at the movie, you can see where the need of the moment changed certain lines, and so on and so forth. So, I actually worked from his script before those actors got their hands on it, rather than after.

AR: In the case of something like Hitchhiker’s Guide, as I understand it, you were the hand-picked adaptor of Douglas Adams’ work. Can you talk to me a little bit about your relationship with Adams? You said he was a mentor to you, and I know you’re still working on Hitchhiker’s Guide to a certain extent.

DM: Yes, well Douglas heard when I did the Superman docu-drama and then a couple of series of Superman on BBC, because DC was very pleased with it. At that time he’d just finished what turned out to be the last Hitchhiker’s book, because he, sadly, died before he could write anymore. He wanted these three novels to be brought back home to radio. He asked my boss at the BBC if I might be free and available and interested in doing it. I think I was at his front door before he put the phone down from that call — and panting!

It was such a wonderful thing to have someone of that imagination and stature hear your work and think that you’re the right person to bring theirs back to life in sound. We had several very happy afternoons talking about how to bring Hitchhiker’s back and the imaginative changes that might or might not be made. It was astonishing to me that he trusted someone who was really as new as I was to the game. Over the rest of the ’90s, whenever we bumped into each other … we would sit down, have a cup of tea and a chat.

“What I’ve tried to do is to give it a kind of a rhythm, I suppose, because I’m a drummer in my other life.”

I had corresponded with Neil Gaiman for about 25 years, but we actually only really met up when we started doing this BBC stuff together — we had lunch last week, and we were talking about how we were both mentored by Douglas. Because he was a journalist, and Douglas, I think, persuaded him that he should be a writer. In the same way Douglas picked out what I did and encouraged me to do it by giving me his big box of toys to play with. What a fortunate connection to have made, and what a fantastic man. I’m thrilled that all the techniques that brought me to Douglas’s attention and made him trust me, I am now able to bring to bear on The X-Files.

AR: Do you just have a taste for science fiction and superhero stories or does it come from a sense that these are the stories that work best for ambitious audio?

DM: It started that way, but really I’d like to be doing Shakespeare — but nobody asks me! I mean, I love sci-fi, but I love lots of other things, too: biography and history and good novels and plays and poetry. That said, I am speaking to you from an office full of toys. I have to admit there is a [xenomorph from] Alien looking down at me from an angle, and then there is a Dalek from Doctor Who somewhere else.

AR: It would be cool if you did, like, Alexander Hamilton’s biography with sound effects and a full cast.

DM: I would love to do that … because you can. In the end, the biggest inspiration for me is a well-told story. All I am is a storyteller, and it’s just the techniques you use, isn’t it? What I’ve tried to do is to give it a kind of a rhythm, I suppose, because I’m a drummer in my other life. I think that drummers know where to drop the bombs, as one BBC producer told me once. There’s a way of telling a story …. If you’re in the fortunate position of being able to: A. write the script, B. push the actors around, C. edit the dialogue, and then D. add all the sound effects and the music, what you’ve got is a wonderful way of getting a rhythm into it and putting a bit of a swing on one bit and then hitting hard somewhere else, and so on.

It’s like watching, for the first time, a movie like Raiders of the Lost Ark, which is so perfectly put together, and all the jumps are in the right places, and all of the moments of calm before the storm and all of that. It’s the work of people like Spielberg and great directors. That’s really the thing. It’s all to do with storytelling and using the media to convey this story in a stylish way. It really doesn’t have to be science fiction or fantasy. It could be Alexander Hamilton.

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https://audiblerange.com/arts-culture/who-is-this-dirk-maggs-and-how-does-he-rule-so-hard/Arts & CultureAuthorsInside AudibleInterviewsMystery & ThrillerSci-fi & FantasyStorytellingThu, 03 Aug 2017 10:57:20 -0500A Dark Fixation: Psychopaths In LiteratureStories transform us. Literally. We know from brain imaging research that engaging with a story lights up the same sections of our brains that process sights, sounds, tastes, and movement in real life. We don’t just take in words. We live them alongside characters — even when the character is a psychopath.

“Psychopath” is a term only for those who score high on the Psychopathy Checklist, which was devised in the ’70s by psychologist Robert D. Hare, whose Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us is still the leading source on the topic. Hare described psychopaths as “social predators who charm, manipulate, and ruthlessly plow their way through life, leaving a broad trail of broken hearts, shattered expectations, and empty wallets.” Psychopaths are highly represented in prison populations, but are perhaps even more disproportionately represented in crime fiction. Why the love for the character without conscience?

“There’s a certain morbid fascination in being a voyeur into the dark underbelly of human nature,” says Jen Waite, author of A Beautiful, Terrible Thing, a memoir detailing her suspicions that she married a psychopath. “That fascination is compounded by the fact that, outwardly, psychopaths often appear quite normal, even charming and attractive. When we watch these characters in movies or read about them in books, we are on the one hand horrified and assured of our own humanity, and on the other hand secretly wondering, ‘Do I have any of that darkness in me?’”

Even more chilling, perhaps, is the closeness of the psychopath voice whispering in your ear. “When you’re listening to a story, it’s kind of a hostage situation,” says Dana Norris, a writer and the founder of Story Club, a monthly, multicity live storytelling event. ”People like hearing a story told to them … You feel connected to the teller in a very immediate way.”

When you think of psychos in literature, maybe the first to come to mind is American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman — but he wasn’t the first, the last, or the deadliest. Consider these psychopath-centric stories, which take listeners and readers to the darker side of humanity:

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https://audiblerange.com/playlisted/a-dark-fixation-psychopaths-in-literature/Arts & CultureBrainCrimeLiteratureMemoirMystery & ThrillerPlaylistedRecommendationsTue, 01 Aug 2017 12:50:03 -0500Escapes: Listens For Family Roadtrips (That You Will Love, Too)You’ve decided it’s time to escape: to the beach, to the mountains, to the perfect small town. From your job, from responsibilities, from life. But whoever first said “getting there is half the fun” was being … optimistic. Cramped quarters and cranky kids, not to mention traffic, can easily put a damper on the journey, but the listens below will help make it memorable and let you and your family escape your means of escape. Turn that minivan into a rocket ship when you hit the road this year.
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https://audiblerange.com/playlisted/escapes-listens-for-family-roadtrips-that-you-will-love-too/AudiobooksKidsPlaylistedRecommendationsSci-fi & FantasyTravelYA/TeensThu, 20 Jul 2017 09:55:08 -0500